


The Adventures of... : Chapter 2, Home life.

by TheWrittenRambles



Series: The Adventures Of... [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gay Romance, Lesbian Romance, Sci-Fi Romance, gay woman, lesbian fiction, lesbian science fiction, lesbian sf, origonal work, queer sf, queer woman, sf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 22:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21309766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrittenRambles/pseuds/TheWrittenRambles
Summary: Of course, it's not all fun and games, and sometimes we need to deal with life as dull and as unsexy as it is. We pay bills, sort films, water our plants, fantasize about our roommates topping us, clean the windows. The usual...
Series: The Adventures Of... [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533203
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	The Adventures of... : Chapter 2, Home life.

I run a small office on one of the lower levels. It's nothing much. A room with a desk and a few worldly goods that make it look less like a rented cubicle lodged in the side of the space station. Adjacent to it is my cabin. Room 73. On deck 43. A low number right? Well, all the tech that makes the sexy fun time oh so fun normally works down here. So it's easier to have a base of operations near where I...er...operate. Point is, it's also expensive as all hell to get a cabin above level 60. And it only gets more expensive until you get to the top. Funnily enough, the top of the station has a HUGE garden biome. It's about 500000 meters squared, some of it based on multiple levels. It looks amazing. I've been up a few times to fix stuff that falls off of other stuff. You know how it goes. It's nice up there, you can see the trees, all the lovely stars, the endless indifferent void that I'm pretty sure will fuck you up if you look into it too long. Anyway! Getting off-topic. Shit.   
Room 73, it's like all the other rooms on this deck, dull and grey with a bit 73 stencilled on the door. It's not a bad deck. Though the constant cold drone of air recycling reminds me of being trapped inside a shitty hand drier. 

I wave my keys over the lock and the door unlocks. Sliding it sideways I step into my office come home. This is my little space. And it's full of plants. (Because if I'm going to go to Green Hill Zone, you sure as hell bet your ass that I'm going to take cuttings.) I'll admit, it's mostly succulents and those things that grow fast and look like moss.   
Either way, I like it green. Colourful at least. I'm not going to live in a drab little box, I'm going to fill my space with something. It's nice to come home and do something fun, taking care of something, let it grow and be all big and cool. Look, I have layers, I'm not all “Spank spank! Come for me now!' I have layers. I'm multi-dimensional. But I think I'm getting distracted.   
Plants good.   
“Ah, so you're back.”  
People...  
I close the door behind me with the same sort of resignation as a guillotine blade.   
“Tek...”  
Technically Tek isn't a "person person". (Fuck that sounds rude, let me try again). Tek's an artificial person. Person shaped on the outside, but they have all manner of strange bits inside that are mostly there to look gross if you saw them in half. I don't advise you do that by the way. She gets REALLY fussy about it. 

Time for back story. Tek is...well. Okay, being self-employed on a station of sexy deviants is fun and all, more so when you get to trade work for the occasional fun time favour. But you do need to employ people to do the heavy lifting. And I mean literal sometimes. She also has a brain like a finely tuned abacus. She's smort. With the biggest arms and nearly seven-foot of perfectly jacked lady robot. (BRAIN FOCUS).   
Laws about having artificial people are....a legal black hole that is currently swallowing a pulsar which is colliding with a supernova. It's complicated. But only if you operate in owned space, and guess what? We don't! Trumpet sounds please(!)  
This means people can own artificial people...which, look, several centuries have told us that having a class of people to do the shit we don't want to do is bad in so many many many ways. So let us leave that stone unturned. Normally they are made for military or industrial use or medical, or private sector. Shitty jobs people don't want to do. But out here, they are free people. So Tek works for me. The paperwork says “Owned” but I would prefer employed. It's less...well....yeah.   
“Yeah, what do you know about that...”   
Shit. Did I forget anything? Birthday? A job? Is someone dead? Did I leave the stove on?  
“You said you'd be back at 5:30. We have the paperwork for the Lannis job to sort out.”  
“AH!” Panic.   
See this is why all the humans died in The Terminator. Not bad! Don't think of her as a sexy Skynet! What? Why are we calling her sexy Skynet? Because we're still riding the high from an hour ago. All the ladies are sexy right now!   
“Right....I'm owning it. I got...delaaaaaaaaaaaayed.” I roll out the A as I try to think of a suitable excuse that does betray what I was doing.  
“You have rope burn,” Tek notes as she looked at my wrists.   
“Well...there's probably a really good explanation as to why.”  
“Because you were seeing Ma'ri.” Tek replied quite plainly.   
“Yes...but....” I'm stalling now. Like a jet engine.   
“Next time, just send a message and I'll reschedule.” She pulled out a chair and sat down on her side of the desk. Annoyingly precise and tidy.   
Okay, calling it annoyingly tidy is rude, and probably a serotype. She's just good at being neat, which is at a contrast to the almost classic image of the wacky untidy gear head.   
“Look, I'm sorry. I fucked up.” I take my seat opposite hers and star hauling things around my desk to tidy it up. “It was just, I did some work for her, and she owed me a favour.”  
“So you're trading rope burns for favours now?” Tek said with a raised eyebrow.   
“Oh god no! I had standards woman.” I blurted.   
I don't really. But if I do a job, I will be paid in actual money.   
“Accounts are good! We're good. This was just some poorly planned time off.” I look over at my to-do pile. It's all requisition orders, plans and schematics I need to review for future jobs. Nothing overly serious. 

The first slip of paper bills I need to sort. (Not ones I have the pay, the kind that pays me. The best kind!). It's a repair job dated last week for repairing a series of thermal exhausts. Easily done and done. Slip the paper onto the scanner and a digital copy is fired off to the lucky client. Give it a few days, and I will be a tiny sum of credits richer. Ah, capitalism.   
That said, it's not like I'm broke. I make good money, most of my clients pay on time. I only pay a small hefty sum to keep my lodgings and paying Tek, who to save money lives in the second room. It's pretty good. It's just...difficult to have company over. It's not a huge place, and well, Tek has few hobbies. So getting her out is...tricky. I'm sitting there watching her now. Sorting tools and paperwork. Checking her voltmeter. God, her hands are huge, and yet she could thread a needle blindfolded. She'd look good in a blindfold though...something about the tough ones when they are all trussed up. That cute inverse of power-   
“I have to remind you...” Tek derails my thoughts with the same force of a train riding off a bridge.   
“Yes.” Yes, I'm awake. I'm not fantasizing.   
“Good because we have the AC job tomorrow.”  
“Urggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh-” I let my head fall onto my desk. “Ow.” I'm being dramatic because I'm tired.   
“Did you forget?” Tek asked, thankfully in a very nice and non-judgmental tone.   
“Yes...no...I just. Urgh. I like my quiet Sundays. And crawling through the entire system will be.”  
“I do realise that it will be...unpleasant. However, they did offer to pay us triple our usual fee to compensate us.”  
I pull open my desk drawer and yank out the structural plans of the AC units that run through deck 81. It's all a confusing mess of conduits and power systems and tubes and shit. It's been redone and rewired and over-wired and everything for so long it's hard to make out what is what. But station management has been sending people into fix problems for months now. Or try to track down what it could be. I'm pretty sure it's a damaged power coupling.  
“Remember to bring spares for a power coupling, if not, we can bypass it?” I look up from my notes as a begin to doodle out a few solutions.   
“You think that might be a hidden power junction in there?” She tilts her head looking at my notes.   
I frown as I look over the plans again. “It's possible. If they're only having fluctuations in the nearby sections, it's a coupling or a node.”   
“I prep the node repair kit then.” She began to make a note on a tablet. I don't know why she needs to note it. She remembers everything.   
“And...lets me safe. Fire and breach sealing foam.”   
“We are down to the last cannister.” She makes a note, however.   
“I know, we can write it off as a business expanse. I just don't lite catching fire or being exposed to a hard vacuum. It tends to kill us feeble mushy humans.”  
“It's all part of my plan. I'll have you vented into space and the superior robot life shall rule supreme.” She was deadpan but still funny.   
I chuckle as I rub my aching wrists. “Look, it's been a long one, and we are probably going to be running for a long time tomorrow. I'm going to just turn in and we can get a fresh start first thing tomorrow. 6 AM start. That way we can have something of a weekend to salvage.”  
Tek got up as well, sorting out her notes and papers. “Not a bad idea, I'll prep our gear for the morning. I'll wake you up at 6 AM.”   
“Thaaaaanks.” I call back in a singsong voice as I go to my side of the room. Sliding my door open, I step inside my little sanctum. Untidy and perfectly mine. There's a window overlooking my room. It's only a few feet across. But I get a great view of the moon below. It's icy surface all lined with mining complexes. From up here, it looks pretty great.   
“Lights! Shutters!” I call the computer.   
The glass is covered with a metal shutter, and the lights come into a dull bloom. I'm just in time to see the edge of my bed come into view before I topple right into it with a dull thud. God that feels good.   
I do need to shower...get pyjamas on, eat dinner. But...  
I grab the edge of the blanket and rollover. Just a teeeeeeeny nap for now. 

Sometime later my alarm is going off and Tek is knocking on my door. It's 7 AM. I slept a lot. Bugger. 

“Shit fuck bugger and ass.” I groan as I pull myself to the edge of the bed to grope at something that could be the faintest hope of properly waking up.   
“Ah, so you're awake then.” I can hear Tek's calm but...very disapproving job from the other side of the door. “There should still be enough hot water for a shower. It's my turn to do breakfast. But don't take long.”  
With low footsteps carried her away from the door, and I pulled myself off the deliciously warm blankets to the shower cubicle that was built into the wall of my room. I yanked the lever, and with a Cthulhu like gurgle, the plumbing rose from its slumber.  
A blast of recycled water hit my face. Dropped from the faucet built into the tiled ceiling. it was chalky and left a sting in the air. Too many times through the filtration plant. We must be running low. Hopefully that' wasn't a job I would be sent to deal with. Slowly, the water began to cool, and soon it was less of a warm shower, but a freezing downpour. It was time to get up and face the day. 

Rugged and well-worn overalls, tool belt, glove, tool pack full of spare parts and hard hart. (sexy). Thankfully we are working on an internal system, so no need to wear a pressure suit hurrah!  
Yeah, it sounds cool. Hey, I get to do engineering in a pressure suit. Cos I'm a cool-cool spacewoman. But in reality, it hakes half an hour to get one on, you sweat buckets because cooling units take up power, and you can't waste the battery because if the room does suffer sudden decompression, you need the power. So, you spend all your time, WORKING, in a hot pressure suit, which god you need to hold it if you need to pee. Because that's another half hour, getting out of the damn thing, which needs an extra person to help you with. Because hey, it's the far-flung future who needs suits you can easily use?   
Ahem. I'm getting ahead of myself.   
I've at least packed a respirator because not everyone on this station breaths “type 3” as they call it. (Oxygen). Some folks here breath argon if you could believe it. Still, I doubt it's going to get that bad. 

So, a breakfast of heated protein goop on toast and we are good to go!   
The corridors are quiet, it's a Sunday after all. Sundays are the days when the drunken partygoers recover, pay their fees and slink off back to their wives. Or that's at least what I like to think when I see the more ragged business looking type recovering on the hyper-lifts.   
Today ours was empty. They're large things as well. About twelve square foot, mostly support poles, chairs and the occasional plastic potted plant in the corner. On either side, there was a door for each floor. 

Surprisingly, for a station that catered to the horny, the drunk and the sometimes...well....the stuff we don't talk about, the hyper-lifts were mostly free of piss smells. This is mostly because someone invented a robot specifically for that job. And the security drones will taze you for trying. I remember orientation when I joined the station, you get a welcome package of dos and don'ts. And under don'ts was “pee on any of the public transit units” and a video of someone getting hit with 1,200 volts. I suppose it makes for a bloody good deterrent.   
Tek stands over me while I'm resting my legs on a plastic shape that's supposed to be a chair. We're creeping our way to deck 81. I'm still too tired, and maybe still a little wound up from last night. Felt good. I need to speak to Ma'ri again sometime and then there was that offer of her's.   
I bite my lip, thinking about how much fun we had, and all sorts of naughty fun we could get into. God she's so much fuuuuun...  
“What's so funny?” I hear Tek as, pulling me back to reality.   
I look up, and she's peaking over the edge the map, she noticed I was deep in thought.   
“Oh, I was just...Someone made me an offer.”  
“An offer?” Tek raised an eyebrow.   
“It's more of a social event kind of thing.” I murmured. “Trying to decide whether or not to take someone up on it.”  
“It might be good for you,” Tek said, returning to the map. “I've heard that humans need prolonged social contact to stop them from going mad.”  
“Oh, that's a joke.” I chortled, letting my foot gently and playfully kick her shin.   
“Yes, I had a choice between the humour upgrade and the Kill All Humans upgrade.”  
“Well, you know which one I prefer,” I said as I leaned back in my chair, feeling it's feeble plastic form groan.   
“I certainly know what you prefer.” I heard her say from behind the paper.   
I couldn't see it, but I was pretty certain I could sense her smiling.  
God, she's so cute.   
The hyper-lift slowly came to juddering halt at a junction before wobbling sidewise and continuing on its way.  
I kept looking at her and thinking, thinking if I should say something? Probably. But...urgh. I hate my brain sometimes.  
She turns at looks at the scrolling sign above the door. There's a ding. Level 81. God, this will be a trek.   
I won't bore you with the details, but we waved our way past the usual security, the general manager and wandered into the back of the shop. Surprisingly it was not filled with toys of shapes sizes, species and colours. But...a boring coffee shop. It was small, but well lit, nicely decorated and actually, somewhat welcome. I kept thinking that Ma'ri and I should come here sometime. But that's for future me to worry about. Right now, I'm on the clock. I'm focused now.   
We get a lecture from management, his place is popular, but the power outages are being traced back to somewhere near his shop, the best access port is in his place. So station management has told him to bolt up and let us through.   
He's a Tringk, sort of...insectoid reptile? Look, I didn't study biology. I just know sometimes evolution rolls those dice hard. Pointed head, bones and a carapace, eyes like cloudy marble, and thick antenna. He had one of those segmented mouths, like four sections, lift right, top, bottom. They didn't open when they talked, instead, they sort of...hummed? Thankfully neural translator mods have come along way since those boxes people would carry on their wrist. Mine is a teeny one that sits in the base of my skull. I've been meaning to get it upgraded for a while...but that's a different story. For now, let's deal with this dude.   
Pirrak was his name and he was...unhappy.   
“You come in here and ruin my work!” He buzzes. Eyes narrow and antenna vibrating. “Always you people, coming in and messing with ducts. It's a rudeness!”   
Throwing his chunky arms in the air he totters down to the workspace at the back of his store, there's a hatch, like something you'd see on an old Earth submarine. “Every month, I have people come down and tell me, you need fixing! This place was fine until the power goes and breaks!” His buzzing starts to sound like an angry hornet's nest. “I should be suing the people here just for wasting my time, in and out all of you!”  
Thankfully Tek is tall enough to remind people that it's not nice to be rude. She's a tall lass. With the power to make people tremble in their boots.   
But that means legal paperwork.   
That probably explains why Mr Pirrak is at the very least being somewhat compliant. The paperwork said he had to help us. Didn't say he had to like it.   
Anyway, vents suck.   
Okay, haha very funny. Pun times over.   
But they do suck. I've been in tight spaces before. But this is a mess. It's a triangular-shaped hole. For reasons, I can't understand. Pipes, ductwork and all other greebles run the walls. It's small enough for me to crawl, scramble crouch and maybe work. We shall see.   
I was running point on this one, Tek would be my eyes and ears. No sense in both of us crawling in there. Tek can work the maps, plans, technical stuff that I can't do. Besides, to get back, I'm literally going to have to crawl backwards. Easier done without a giant robot lady behind me.   
Torch stuffed in my mouth, pack on my back, tools on my belt, and papers in my hand, I begin to crawl.   
“So...” Tek said in my ear, her little voice all fuzzy with static. “You're going to want to take a left after 100 meters. There's a fork”  
I kept crawling. And crawling. And oh hey look, more crawling. Eventually, I got to fork.   
This was something akin to a plan. I mean, plans are just vague shapes of an idea with an intermarry strapped to it.   
Turning left I did my best to keep moving. And boy did it just get tighter and hotter. (Yes, you can laugh at that one). I was probably climbing past a head exchange, there was that metal tang in the air, the kind that makes your throat itch. Urgh.   
“Have I found a portal to Hell, or did it just get hot in here?” I mop my brow and keep moving.   
“You're underneath the heat exchange for cold storage units,” Tek said, I could hear her flicking through notes.   
“Well someone tells them to get a better system, they are venting extra heat through the ductwork,” I grumbled it's probably something that would never get fixed. It was probably bothering exactly 1 person at this point (me), so unless it started to annoy lots of people with lots of money, then it would get fixed.   
I digress, and I'm getting away from the more interesting bits that will be happening later in this dumb adventure. So, there I was, crawling through this godforsaken mess of a conduit system until I find the problem.   
“I think I found the problem.”  
I mean, the problem is typically means something along the lines of “Where are my keys?” or “Did I leave the stove on?” This was...  
“A massive fungal pod is growing on a power node.”  
I mean, this was new to me. I knew fungus could grow in all sorts of places. Hell, some stuff feeds of radiation to grow. But this...  
“Growing on or out of the power node?” Tek's voice fuzzes in my ear again. It's hard to tell what she's saying, it must be how deep I am into the structure.   
“Uh...bit of both? Maybe?”  
The power node was basically a fancy circuit breaker/batter/do it all. They prevent shorts, allow for diagnostics and help regulate power flow. 

They normally look like a long tube, a foot long, with glowing blue lines down the sides, and a spherical central segment. It's too small to have an interface built into it. But, if you're smart, you can use a wireless control, or some other device to access it. Well, but right now, something is glowing, covering most of it with a strange red glow. It looks like a tangle of tentacles forming like a sort of wireframe ball? It's straaaange. They all seem to have these thin red lines, almost like veins, scattered along the surface, that's what's throwing out this glow. It's almost like a night light. Inside, that centre, there was a sort of smaller ball. If I had to guess, this outer structure grew to protect the pod in the middle. It looked like a smooth ball, the surface was marked with those strange lines that seemed to also glow, only duller? Shining my light on it, I could see that it was just a little bit translucent, almost like skin? Gross.   
Now, I like my plants, fungus? Not so much, clearly this was some sort of nasty fungal spore pod? But it wasn't my area, I liked peace lilies and succulents.   
You'd think I'd be savvy enough to not touch the power conduit that was infected with the possible Spore of Doom. But, I'm a dumbass. So my first instinct is to touch it. 

“So what is it exactly?” Tek said, her words jabbing me in the side of the head and reminding me to be a professional.   
“It looks like some sort of fungal growth. I guess it this thing got into the node it's probably causing the shorts.”  
“I'm amazed it hasn't caused any sort of fire...” Tek was right, and come to think of it, so was I. This thing could be leaching power off of the device....except.   
“Hey, there's tool marks on the node.”  
“Tool marks?” Tek must be having a time trying to work out what is going on.   
“Yeah, it's like someone was working here. But they don't look like the marks you'd leave if you installed the node. More like, if you scraped...something off?”  
“But if someone was scraping things off-” Tek started.   
“It means someone is collecting this stuff?” I finished. (See, we are so cute, we finish each other's sentences).  
“I mean, this could be just a repeat problem?” I tried to sound hopeful that nothing shady was going on.   
“And it's not been logged?” Tek said, there was a hint of “Come on, really?” in her voice.   
“Okay okay. I'm just trying to look on the less ominous side. Let's just fix this and get paid for now, the mysterious mystery of mysterious intrigue can wait for later.”  
“Agreed, we should inform station security once we are done here.” Tek was right of course, this was far beyond our pay grade.   
Pulling a plastic bag out from my pack, I try my best to gently bundle this thing into the bag and remove the current node for cleaning...repairing...or maybe flushing out into the depths of space where it can't harm anyone. Seriously this thing was icky. Of course...I'm not wearing gloves. Who would need rubber gloves here? Anyway, taking the node out was nasty, there was this thick residue all over it like, gunk? It was sticky, like honey. And after bagging the actual pod, there was this tang in the air, it was hard to place, but I was pretty sure it was like a faint aniseed like smell. Which was wild.

Pulling the node out of place, there was a good old fashioned thunk, and it made the classic, “veeeeooo” sound as it powered down. My hands where extra clammy now with this crap. Scrubbing them off on my overalls I did the best I could to clean them before moving onto jury-rigging a relief to the system. Thankfully, I had a breaker rod in my backpack. Not really the best solution, but it's designed to function as a low-end solution until you can fit a new power node. It's basically a large heavily insulated rod, the same length as a standard power node. It will conduct the juice and regulate the power flow. But it will probably last 48 hours max while I sort out a replacement. With much awkward struggling in such a pain in the ass tight space, I manage to get the rod firmly in there, (Hehe).  
Now comes the fun part. Shuffling backwards. Through the crawlspaces. URGH.

“I've done a patch job, we'll need a new node. See if we can either fix this one or call up requisitions.” I make a mental note to keep this one if we can get a node on the cheep. Fix this up and we could sell it off for a fortune. I mean....sell it back to the station, yeah. But really, they're not picky where the parts come from. So long as they work and no one comes along asking why their ship is missing power converts, everyone is happy.  
To cut a long story short, however, I manage to crawl back through all these pipes and junk to my exit where Tek is waiting for me.  
“Well, that was sticky, smelly and gross.” I feel like garbage for some reason. Though crawling through tubes will do that to a person I guess.  
“Is...that slime?” Tek looks me over as I try to rub the last of the gunk onto my suit.  
“Would it be less gross if I said it was ectoplasm from like....8 ghouls?”  
“Uh-uh...I sent the invoice. Let's just go and get you cleaned.” She turned to leave, I could tell that she was smiling again. Damn that cute hidden smile of her's.  
“Would it be more awesome if I said I got into a sword fight with them? And I won because while you were studying...I dunno...stuff, I was studying the blade!”  
“Hm.” Was all I got from her.  
“Yeah, well, my skills are wasted on the likes of you.”  
“And what would those be?” She asked, trying to taunt me.  
“Oh well......” I trailed off as I caught up with her. “A gurl gotta have some surprises.”  
My hands are starting to feel funny where I got the gunk on it. Probably just me imagining things...right?  
We left the shop and began to make our way back to the hyper-lift. There were people about now, though nothing big, the general masses on their way from job to job. Some opening coffee shops, some food halls, other's Lil side businesses. What with all the sexing, you sometimes forget this is a commerce and transportation hub. Some people can do businesses here with their legs closed. (Oooh that sounded prudish. Maybe that's a sign I'm getting....old).  
So now the hyper-lift was getting full of people as we begin to walk back. Me sitting there attracting looks with my slime-covered overalls. Nice. I could make it fashion, give me time.  
“So, a nice bonus and time off. What's you play for the day?” I looked over to Tek who was sitting next to me.  
“Uh...” Tek was never very good at small talk or socialising...  
There were robots on the station. Though, few and far between. It was hard to meet and have good social circles if it's such a small group. And even then, they are mostly service units. Which can be...awkward.  
“I'll probably go through the inventory.” She murmured. “I think we are low in sealing foam...”  
“Ah, I can sort that.” I give her a “ah forget about it” kind of hand-wave before settling into my chair. “You can help me research this Lil guy.”  
I rummage in my pack and pull out the small pod with its strange flesh cage.  
“And by that, I assume you're going to run it through a bio-scan to make sure it's not toxic?”  
“Of course, that was the first thing that came to mind...” I said gently poking the bag.  
Lair.  
“And then handing it over to station security so they can put it in quarantine?”  
“So long as it isn't toxic.” I added, “I want to do a full spectrum bio scan. If this thing is worth money...”  
“Oh, I see,” Tek said, cocking an eyebrow. “You trying to amass a small fortune or something here. Fist the node, now mystery fungus. Is there anything you won't sell?”  
“You?” I joked as I put the bag back into my pack.  
“What's that supposed to mean.” Tek was sounding a little confused.  
“Well...I mean, you're...you...I'm not going to...never mind.”  
I lay back on the hard plastic seat, I could still smell that aniseed smell, it was stronger now. But I still felt like garbage.  
“I'll do it after a rest though. I feel crap.”  
“Your body temperate has risen by point 7 of a degree in the last half hour,” Tek said as they eyed me sideways.  
“Yeah, something like that. When's our stop?” I roll my head back and close my eyes.  
“I'll wake you,” Tek said as they pat my shoulder. From inside her overalls, she pulls out a small pocketbook and flicks open to a page.  
I didn't get a chance to see what it was before I closed my eyes.

Dreams are wild. I read once that it's our brain trying to sort through stuff, or like, it's our brain when it's let loose, and so it can show us what we're scared of, or what we need, or what we want. I don't know how long I was out for. But there was just a moment, just something fuzzy and foggy in my mind as I dozed.  
Skin, warm, soft. Fingers, groping at my shoulders. Between my legs and in my hair. I make a sound, but I don't hear it. I just feel hands all over me. Holding, caressing, teasing and edging. Then breaking through a cloud of nothingness there's a shape, leaning forwards and smiling. She opens her mouth and -  
“Hey, put your shoes on we're at grandma's.”  
I feel a finger poke me in the side and I come back to reality with a bright set of LED lights poking my soft eyes.  
“Urgh.” That was fast. How long?”  
“About half an hour,” Tek said as she helped me up. “How are you feeling?”  
“Warm.” It was the first thing that came to mind. Like a humid warm.  
“Your pulse is also up. Do you need to rest some more when you get in?”  
“Maybe? Let's just get out of this damn box.”  
I shoved past the crowd and made for out exit, anything to escape what now felt like a hot box.  
I must have been doing it in a ruder than usual fashion as I started to get ugly looks from people I shoved out of my way. Even Tek had to march to keep up with me.  
“What's gotten into you?” She's reached out and grabbed my arm as I'm stalking ahead.  
Something feels...good...about her touch like that. Warm. Hot. The tightness and the pull.  
Now I can get horny as much as the next gal, but this was....something new.  
Something twanged inside me, like when you pull a bungee cord reeeeaaaal far and it just...hits you.  
This hit me. Something did a twanging. Like hard.  
I felt something catch inside, that sort of something that you get so rarely. Mostly because it catches you off guard and you feel 1000 things at once.  
I stopped, the hand on my arm feeling like a heavy anchor pulling at my weight.  
“Slow down dammit.” Tek said looking at me as though I had grown an extra head. “Are...you're not doing well are you?”  
I tugged at the collar of my suit and huffed.  
“I'm fine, it's just hot.” Again. Lying.  
“Your core temperature has increased and your pulse is up.” She said flatly. “You sure?”  
I shook myself free and rubbed my eyes gently, trying to just focus.  
“I'm sure.” Lying. Again. “I just need some sleep. Maybe I just got out of the wrong side of the bed.”  
“Pretty sure the side of your bed isn't what's wrong here,” Tek said, perhaps a little dryly than intended.  
“You know what I mean.” I'm getting snappy now. But whatever is up with my brain is just...messy. I mean, the messy brain is probably like, a technical term? Probably. Either way. Messy.

I stalk off, and I can hear Tek behind me. Actually, I can hear everything loudly. My head starts to throb. Shoving open the door to the office I stumble inside. Tossing my bag into the corner of the room I don't even bother to get to my desk, instead, I go for my room, and just as I had started the day, I end my morning face down in a pillow. Turning my head sideways, I look out into the sparkly void before I fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you're enjoying the story so far, this sort of internal monolgue is becoming more and more fun to write, especially as I get more creative with the setting and the people in them. It's all just one big sandbox I'm having fun with right now.


End file.
